Discover Genealogy

Where I can tell stories, relate experiences and pass along tips discovered while doing research on my family; through volunteer activities, including as an Online Parish Clerk; and from projects completed as a genealogical consultant.

Tuesday, 6 December 2016

In
my last post I summarized some information I found about my Pearson ancestors
after analyzing the original will of my Great-Grandaunt Emma Jane (Pearson)
Wray (1861-1951). In this post I will set out some interesting discoveries I
made about others named as beneficiaries.

Emma
Jane kept in contact with her siblings and many nieces and nephews. I have
copies of a few letters and cards from which I have been able to extract
information about several family members. The will added to this library of
data.

Photos taken at 23 Priory Terrace: left -1909; right - present day, from Google street view
Note on the back of the snapshot, later sent to my grandfather, James Pearson Shepheard, says - "My house where I lived when you came to visit me before you went to Canada"; Emma is standing in front of the residence; photo was taken by James Henry (Jim) Pearson, one of Emma's nephews, who was killed in action in WWI

I
stated before that several family members were remembered with cash bequests.
There was another group named who were to receive the residue of Emma’s estate:

·niece
Annie Overton

·Winifred,
the widow of her late nephew Thomas

·two
daughters of her late nephew Thomas – Pamela and Joyce

For
the second group, named in the original will:

Annie
Overton was Annie Louise (Slinn) Overton, a daughter of Sarah Ann Pearson and
George Albert Slinn. She married Walter John Overton in 1910. They had three
children between 1911 and 1915. In the first codicil to Emma’s will, signed in
1947, she left a house in Leamington Spa to Annie and her husband. One might
conclude that Annie and her family had been very supportive of Emma in order to
receive that kind of bequest. The will showed Annie’s address at the time –
Bishops Itchington in Warwickshire – which allowed me to easily find her and
Walter on the 1939 Register living in the same place.

Results
from 1837 onward come up with the mother’s maiden name. Thus I thought I might
be able to match the wives of Emma’s married brothers. The birth dates of the
nieces and nephews I knew about began in the 1880s and extended into the early
1900s, so that gave me a range of years for the searches.

The
will gave me a lot of information about Thomas Pearson’s family from which I
could track them down. He was born in 1892 and had obviously died before 1946
and his daughter would have been born before that year. I figured he would not
have married before 1910, at the age of 18. So I did a search of FreeBMD for
the births of Joyce and Pamela Pearson between 1910 and 1946, looking for
people with mothers with the same maiden name. You can do that for births from
1911 onward on FreeBMD. You can also now search the entire GRO index from 1837
using a maiden name of a mother which really helps in deciding which person
might be the best fit for your family.

Anyway,
between 1910 and 1946 I found 285 girls named Joyce Pearson and 83 named Pamela
Pearson. A computer search narrowed down several on both lists with the same
maiden names for the mother. But only one resulted in girls born within a few
years and a few miles of each other. Their mother’s name was Jenkinson: Joyce
in 1920 and Pamela in 1924 and both in London. A FreeBMD search of marriages
for Thomas Pearson and a lady named Winifred resulted in only one with a
surname of Jenkinson and it was also close in time and proximity to the birth
places of the children – in London, in 1918. I was now very sure I was on the
right track. A search of the death index resulted in deaths for both in the
same locality, Thomas in 1942 and Winifred in 1955, both in Wallington, London.
That was also where I found the couple on the 1939 Register. Starting with
names listed on a will, facts about a whole family emerged.

In
1949, Emma’s codicil to her will took away the bequest to Annie Walton and
divided it among my grandfather, my grandmother and their three
children, all living in Canada.

Emma
Jane’s will was only 2 ½ pages long and each of the codicils were less than a
page each. But they were crammed with information about many individuals and
allowed me to add significant details about my Pearson family ancestors. The
information also left me with several unanswered questions and some new trails
to follow.

Family
historians would be well-advised to obtain copies of wills of any and all
ancestors. Some may come up short but others will be rich with information
about people you may not have even thought about.

Wayne
Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling
four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number
of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history
society journals. He has also served as an editor of two such publications.
Wayne provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Tuesday, 29 November 2016

My
Great-Aunt Emma Jane Wray (nee Pearson) left a will when she died in 1951.
Actually her original will was signed in 1946. She added two codicils, one in
1947 and another in 1949. She left property and sums of money to several nieces
and nephews as well as to some of their children.

I
think Emma had favourites among her siblings, nephews and nieces. She singled
out only a few of them for bequests, generally the younger ones and many of
them unmarried.

For
this time period, mid-20th century, it is often difficult to
specifically identify people. There is no census data. The 1939 Register has
names redacted if they are still possibly alive. BMD records can be confusing
especially when names are common. The will was very helpful in confirming some
people and even in adding some names to the family tree. I will describe how I
was able to sort out some of the people and their relationships in successive
posts rather than try to tell the whole story at once.

Emma
Jane was an older sister to my great-grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Pearson who
married James Shepheard in Devon, in 1890. Emma did not marry until 1916, at
the age of 55. She did not have any children so much of her family life appears
to have centred on her siblings and their children. I have a copy of a
wonderful coloured photograph taken of Emma and her new husband, Stephen Wray
that was given to my grandfather. He kept in touch with her for many years
after he immigrated to Canada in 1907. She also sent him letters and photos which
I have as well.

1916 Wedding photo of Stephen Wray and Emma Jane Pearson

Emma
was very community-minded. She turned to two friends, one a solicitor, to
manage the affairs of her estate. She was generous and supportive of
institutions important to her during her life. In her original will, Emma
provided funds for: the Vicar and Churchwardens to assist them in the
maintenance of the graves of her grandparents, parents and a brother buried in
the Leamington Spa Cemetery and of a chapel in the cemetery (£300); the churchwardens
of two churches for general expenses (£25 each); a convalescent Home for
Consumptives (£25; her sister, my great-grandmother had died of the same
disease); the local British Legion for the benefit of ex-servicemen (£25); a
Home for Incurables (£25); her doctor (£25) and a local minister (£25).

She
left personal cash bequests to only a few family members including:

·niece
Elsie Pearson, in the form of an annuity (£26/an)

·nephew
Alfred Pearson (£100)

·nephew
James Pearson Shepheard (£100)

·nephew
Charles Pearson (£25)

·niece
Evelyn Pearson (£100)

·niece
Annie Walton (£100)

The
residue of Emma’s estate was then to be divided among:

·niece
Annie Overton

·Winifred,
the widow of her late nephew Thomas

·two
daughters of her late nephew Thomas – Pamela and Joyce

Details
about the first group, shown in the original will are as follows:

Elsie
Pearson was Elsie Norris Pearson, a daughter of Emma’s brother, Henry Thomas
Pearson (or Thomas Henry as many documents have his forenames in a different
order). The address given for Elsie in the will, #16 Adelaide Square, Windsor,
was his family’s residence in 1911 and which also helped me find them on the
1939 Register on FindMyPast. I had to
just the address as the FMP database
had the surname spelled as Perrson. You cannot read Elsie’s name on the
register, though, because of an inkblot over most of it. The fact that funds
were set up as an annuity suggested she may have been institutionalized at some
point or incapacitated in some manner. That led me back to the 1911 census
where I found her living at the Royal Deaf &
Dumb Asylum,
Victoria Road, in Margate, Kent, with 349 other students. The story of this
school is very interesting and I will write about it in a later post.

Alfred
Pearson was undoubtedly Alfred Christopher Pearson, the son of Emma’s brother, James
and his wife, Isabella (Atkinson) Pearson. Isabella and her children had moved
to Rhyl, Wales, shortly after the death of her husband in 1897. James is the
sibling buried in Leamington Spa Cemetery whose monument Emma provided funds
for maintenance. Alfred was living at home in Rhyl, Wales, on both the 1901 and
1911 censuses. I also found him on the 1939 Register, still living in Rhyl,
then with a wife, Mary J. They were married in 1923.

James
Pearson Shepheard was my grandfather. He had always been a favourite of his aunt Emma
after his mother died when he was only an infant. He came to live with his
grandparents in Leamington Spa for a time where Emma likely saw him often. They
stayed in touch until her death, well after he had immigrated to Canada.

I
have not found nephew Charles Pearson. In an attempt to locate him on various
records I did several searches of the GRO Online Index. There are 518
names on the birth list between 1880 and 1904, the date range for the births of
most of Emma’s nieces and nephews. One of them could/should be him. I am
looking first to see if any of the mothers’ maiden names match up with those
who married any of Emma’s brothers. There a few possibilities but I have not
confirmed which one is the right Charles. What the will did tell me is that one
of her brothers did have a son of that name, so that is a start.

Evelyn
was probably another daughter of Henry Thomas. We can infer from her name in
the will that she was still unmarried in 1946. There are several women on the
1939 Register that could be her. Perhaps when I obtain a birth certificate and
learn her actual birth date, I may be able to narrow down which one is the most
likely to be my ancestor.

Annie
Walton would have been Annie Isabella (Pearson) Walton, a daughter of James and
Isabella (Atkinson) Pearson. She married Jack Walton in 1944. In a codicil
signed in 1949, Emma revoked the bequest to Annie. I wonder what the story was
for that change. The will did at least tell me that Annie had married and that
her husband’s name was Walton, so that helped to find the marriage date and
place. I have not yet confirmed her or Jack’s residence on the 1939 Register.

The
contents of the will led me to important documents and information about many
Pearson family members. As a result of additional searches I even found some others
who were not named as beneficiaries.

In
my next post I will describe some of the other information I discovered from an
analysis of Emma Jane’s will and codicils.

Wayne
Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling
four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number
of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history
society journals. He has also served as an editor of two such publications.
Wayne provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Tuesday, 22 November 2016

I
was searching for burial information for members of one branch of my family
recently and came across a disturbing note in the burial register for St Paul,
Shadwell parish, tower Hamlets borough, in Middlesex.

The
entry read: 1781 Septr 18 – Mary Parker a
Child twelve days old kept by her Parents in a Closet 2 years unburied and
would not then have buried her, but as they were moving from ye House in King
David Lane.

I
have looked at thousands of pages of entries in parish registers, and found
some sad cases, particularly dealing with children, but I had never seen such a
record as this one.

It
is difficult to imagine why the body of an infant would be kept at all, let
alone for such a time period.

We
do know that there had been a law that required that the dead be wrapped in
wool shrouds from 1666 onward. That had to more to do with supporting the
national wool industry than any religious reason. These are evidenced by the
word “affidavit” in the burial registers indicating such a wrap had been used.
By the late 18th century many parishes were not enforcing the act
although for paupers it had generally been ignored anyway. This burial register did note that the burials were all with Affidavits.

Many
parishes charged fees for burials that, while not necessarily excessive might
have been more than poor families could afford. Could this family not been able
to afford a burial? Could they have forgotten about it after several months?
That’s hard to imagine.

Could
the child have been conceived and born out of wedlock? And then its death
hidden?

It
is interesting that the child had a name but not a coffin.

I
have not tracked down the family after this burial date. The parents’ names were
not recorded so we don’t know whether they had other children or even whether
this child had been baptized. And since they moved away, we don’t know where
their new residence was. There was a 17 January 1781 baptism for a five-month
old Samuel Parker whose parents were Samuel and Mary Parker, and who lived on King
David Lane. They seem to be the most likely family of little Mary. Since they are
also not part of my family, I won’t likely pursue a search for them.

Some
interesting and surprising things turn up in parish registers. This is among
the strangest I have seen, though. And just a bit ghoulish, too!

Wayne
Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling
four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number
of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history
society journals. He has also served as an editor of two such publications.
Wayne provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

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Miller-Watson Family Ca 1886

The photo in the background of this website is of the Miller-Watson Family, taken in Manhattan, Kansas, USA, around 1886. My great-grandfather, Isaac Mayfield Miller, is in the back row, second from the right. My 2nd great-grandmother, Hannah Tunstal (Mayfield) Miller-Watson, is seated front-centre. The other individuals are all of Hannah's other children from both of her marriages.

About Me

Wayne has pursued family history research for a number of decades, on
his own behalf and for others. He volunteers as an Online Parish Clerk,
handling four parishes in Devon, England. Wayne has also been active with a number of family history societies and is the past editor of two family history society journals. He is also an author of several articles
published in a number of different genealogical journals and has made
presentations at genealogical conferences. Following a long and successful
career as a geologist in the oil & gas industry, Wayne now pursues
genealogy as a hobby and a second line of work through his business, Family
History Facilitated.

Wayne is a native Calgarian and a descendant of many immigrants to
southern Alberta who originated in England, Scotland, Germany, the United
States and possibly other areas not yet determined. He actively explores many
family branches spread across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and
Europe.